The Republican tax plan will hurt poor and working-class families

In your editorial cheering on the GOP tax agenda, you failed to mention what it would mean for an important segment of our country: people living in or on the brink of poverty.

Not only would the Republican tax plan raise taxes on millions of low- and moderate-income families to shower our country’s largest corporations and wealthiest individuals with tax cuts, but it also paves the way for a large-scale assault on our country’s anti-poverty programs.

As you hint toward the conclusion of your editorial, our country will eventually have to pay for these unprecedented giveaways to the ultra-wealthy. But who will have to pay?

It will almost certainly be poor and working families.

After driving up the deficit by more than $1 trillion over the next decade, lawmakers will use these shortfalls in the years to come to justify cuts to crucial safety net programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and food and housing assistance. President Donald Trump and congressional leaders have already signaled that “welfare reform” — a racially coded euphemism for attacking anti-poverty programs — is coming next.

Cuts to those programs will take food off the tables of working families, send rents skyrocketing for low-income households, and ultimately make upward mobility less attainable. The suffering would be felt disproportionately by people of color.

And then there is the immediate financial pain that will result if the tax bill repeals the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. This would strip an estimated 13 million people nationwide of health care and send families and individuals free-falling into poverty.

Indeed, far from making our country more prosperous, the Republican tax agenda will impoverish tens of millions Americans while making our nation a much less fair place. It is both a fiscal and moral disaster. Congress should rip it up and start over.